As the search continued for more than 160 people believed to be missing days after a destructive wall of water killed more than 100 people in Texas, the full extent of the catastrophe has yet to be revealed.
State officials have warned that unaccounted for victims could still be found amid the massive piles of debris that stretch for miles.
Governor Greg Abbott said: “Know this: We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for. Know this also: There very likely could be more added to that list.”
Mr Abbot said officials had been seeking more information about those who were in the state’s Hill Country during the Fourth of July holiday but did not register at a camp or a hotel and may have been in the area without many people knowing.
The lowlands of Kerr County along the Guadalupe River, where most of the victims of the flash flooding have been recovered so far, are filled with youth camps and campsites, including Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 campers and counsellors died. Officials said on Tuesday that five campers and one counsellor had still not been found.
Crews in airboats, helicopters and on horseback, along with hundreds of volunteers are part of one of the largest search operations in Texas history.
The flash flood is the deadliest from inland flooding in the US since Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flood on July 31 1976 killed 144 people, Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections, said.
That flood surged through a narrow canyon packed with people on a holiday weekend, Colorado’s centennial celebration.
Public officials in charge of locating the victims are facing intensifying questions about who was in charge of monitoring the weather and warning that floodwaters were heading toward camps and homes.
Mr Abbott promised that the search for victims would not stop until everyone was found. He also said US president Donald Trump had pledged to provide whatever relief Texas needed to recover. Mr Trump plans to visit the state on Friday.
Outside the cabins at Camp Mystic where the girls had slept, mud-splattered blankets and pillows were scattered on a grassy hill that slopes toward the river. Also in the debris was pink, purple and blue luggage decorated with stickers.
The flash floods erupted before daybreak on Friday after massive rains sent water speeding down hills into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise eight metres (26ft) in less than an hour.
Some campers had to swim out of cabin windows to safety while others held onto a rope as they made their way to higher ground.
Just two days before the flooding, Texas inspectors had signed off on the camp’s emergency planning. But five years of inspection reports released to The Associated Press do not provide any details about how the camp would instruct campers about evacuating and specific duties each staff member and counsellor would be assigned.
Questions mounted about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley”.
Leaders in Kerr county, where searchers have found about 90 bodies, said their first priority was recovering victims, not reviewing what had happened in the moments before the floods.
Kerr County judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said the county did not have a warning system.
The bodies of 30 children were among those that have been recovered in the county, which is home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, Mr Kelly said.
The devastation spread across several hundred miles in central Texas all the way to just outside the capital of Austin.
